USGIF GotGeoint BlogUSGIF promotes geospatial intelligence tradecraft and a stronger community of interest between government, industry, academia, professional organizations and individuals focused on the development and application of geospatial intelligence to address national security objectives.

May 16, 2016

The U.K. electricity industry has been through privatization and changing regulation. From privatization to consolidation to expansion the market has seen cyclical consolidation and expansion. The structure of the industry that has evolved has become a model for many others including North American regulators and utilities.

There are many companies in the electricity generation sector, from large multinationals to small, family-owned businesses running a single site. Transmission in the U.K. is operated by three regulated monopolies. Fourteen distribution companies are responsible for the distribution infrastructure. There are 39 energy suppliers who compete with each other to supply energy to customers. Full competition was introduced into Britain’s retail energy markets for large customers in 1990, in 1994 for medium sized entities and in 1998 for domestic customers.

At the Future of Canada's Utilities Summit in Toronto, Lawrence Slade, CEO of Energy UK, gave a fascinating overview of the evolution of the U.K. energy retail market from a market that was perceived as broken, noncompetitive and inefficient, to its present disruptive (to incumbents) state with new entrants into the market almost every week.

Energy UK is the trade association for the UK energy industry representing over 80 suppliers and generators of electricity and gas for domestic and business consumers.

The energy regulator in the U.K. is Ofgem. In 2002 Ofgem abolished price caps across the market based on the concept that "competition could deliver more benefits for customers than regulation." But there was a widespread perception that the market was not competitive. In 2008 Ofgem announces a probe into energy supply markets. In 2014 Ofgem referred the energy market to the Competition and Markets Authority.

However, in the last few years, the number of customers switching their energy supplier has increased dramatically. The number of new energy suppliers has gone up dramatically and the public has shown with its feet that it prefers the new entrants to the incumbents. More than a million customers are leaving the incumbents for the new entrants every year. The market share the new entrants has achieved is remarkable, 15% in a couple of years and it continues to rise.

There are price comparison web sites. Collective switching where customers join together to get a better price from a supplier is commonplace. This together with government ads has achieved a record level of customers switching, 4 million in 2015 and over 1.1 million in the first quarter of 2016.

The biggest hurdle that had to be overcome and continues to be a challenge is engaging with customers. When the market was first opened up, many customers didn't understand how the market functions. Many assumed that all energy companies are the same and it wouldn't be worth switching. The reality is that customers can save hundreds of pounds a year by switching. An Ofgem survey in 2014 found that the amount of money that the average customer would have to save to encourage them to switch was £94. It turns out this is just about the amount that customers save per annum by switching.

But it is not just about price. The new entrants have done a better job of engaging with the customer, by providing green energy, better customer service, a free heater or broadband and energy packages. The incumbents have realized that they are rapidly losing a major part of their customer base and are starting to fight back.

The future

In the future it is expected that customers will be able to switch in 24 hours rather than the current two weeks. There will be additional trials to try to engage with late adopters, the customers who still have not seen the value of switching in a competitive market. The rollout of smart meters will make it easier for innovators to use customer power usage patterns to demonstrate the advantage of smart devices, batteries and load shifting. It is expected that energy suppliers will get more involved in managing devices on the other side of the meter.

There is the threat of intermediaries coming between the customer and the energy supplier leading to disconnect of the relationship between a supplier and their customers. The continued drop in cost and efficiency improvements from solar PV and batteries may lead to customers going off the grid. This creates a regulatory headache of how to recover costs for stranded network assets that may only carry a small proportion of their design capacity. On the plus side electric vehicles and the possible decarbonization of heat could potentially reverse the demand decline.

September 17, 2015

According to the annual ranking by the Global Green Economy Index (GGEI) Vancouver is the world's fourth greenest city. The most recent GGEI analysis covers 60 countries and 70 cities. It tracks how investors rank the appeal of cities and countries as markets for green investment and it provides a global measure of performance in key efficiency sectors, including buildings, transport, tourism and energy. It also integrates environment & natural capital measuring perceptions and performance in environmental areas like air quality, water, forests and agriculture. According to the GGEI the top three greenest cities are Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Stockholm. The countries corresponding to these cities (Denmark, Netherlands, and Sweden) also rank high, in the top 5 country rankings. Canada is 12th. The Nordic cities have achieved their high standing with the help of their respective national governments, whereas Vancouver has achieved its high green ranking on its own with little help from the federal government.

How did Vancouver do this ?

I have blogged on several occasions about geospatial developments at the City of Vancouver. Vanmap, which is the City's geospatial portal, was an early development that has supported a number of the City's green initiatives. Vancouver was one of the first cities that made its geospatial and other data open and free.

Yesterday at Ottawa's City Hall, Andrea Reimer, Vancouver's Deputy Mayor, described in a fascinating presentation how Vancouver achieved its high GGEI ranking and its plans to rise even higher to become the world's greenest city by 2020. In addition the City has recently committed to running 100% on renewable energy by 2035. This means only green energy sources for electricity, heating and cooling and transportation.

This all started about a decade ago, when a public consultation about greening the city attracted an incredible 2300 people. The enthusiastic response was unexpected. It cost participants ten dollars and the organizers were expecting something on the order of a few hundred people. It turned out that they had to change the venue twice to accommodate everyone. The mega response clearly showed a tremendous interest in green by Vancouver's citizens. From this beginning Vancouver's greenest city initiative has continued to be a grass roots movement supported by the City government.

The City started off with some quick start projects which had high visibility and were inexpensive. These included separated bicycle lanes, provision for organic waste (food scraps), a deconstruction bylaw, drinking water stations, community gardens, urban commercial farms, green buildings, city power utility that generated electricity by burning sewage and waste, commercial car sharing, and an urban forest initiative.

The City developed the Greenest City Action Plan (GCAP) which focussed on 10 goal areas addressing three overarching areas of focus; zero carbon, zero waste and healthy ecosystems. The 10 goal areas were arrived at by a process of public consultation.

The Greenest City Action Plan includes commitments to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, both from City operations and the community; generate 100 per cent of electricity from renewable resources; and implement the greenest building codes in North America. This commitment has helped stimulated the local green economy. 5% of all jobs in Vancouver are green and Vancouver is among the top 10 green technology clusters. World-leading companies such as Westport Inovations (advanced natural gas engine-maker), General Fusion (nuclear fusion), Ballard Power Systems (hydrogen fuel cells) and Saltworks Technologies (waste water remediation) are based in Vancouver. In Vancouver's case economic development and greening the city have gone hand in hand.

The results of the greenest city initiative to date are impressive; for example, 8% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 18% reduction in waste going to landfills or incinerators, 18% reduction in water use per capita, 19% increase in jobs in the green sector, 30% increase in food assets, and 10% increase in trips by bicycle, on foot or using public transit.

Vancouver's greenest city initiative is an amazing story with concrete measurable achievements. As David Chernushenko, Ottawa City councilman, said in his comments after Andrea's presentation, there is no reason from a technology perspective that other cities such as Ottawa cannot follow in Vancouver's footsteps with their own solutions reflecting their unique environment. But the key ingredient that enabled Vancouver's green revolution is broad public participation, which Vancouver had right from the beginning.

April 21, 2012

Directions Magazine is hosting a webinar about how the City of Vancouver has implemented an integrated solution focusing on urban planning and infrastructure management. Jonathan Mark, Senior Manager GIS and CADD Services and Dan Campbell, Graphics Planner, will discuss their implementation and the use cases that drove it. The City of Vancouver uses both Autodesk and Pitney Bowes Software applications extensively, creating the 2D to 3D work flow. To date, Autodesk products have been used primarily for the design and maintenance of infrastructure, 3D modeling and visualization and web mapping, while Pitney Bowes Software’s MapInfo Professional has been used for analysis on urban planning projects. With the announcement of the strategic partnership between Autodesk and Pitney Bowes Software, the City is expecting to be better able to integrate these workflows and share information.

Ahmed Abukhater, Pitney Bowes Software Director of Global Product Management, will be joined by Justin Lokitz, Autodesk Senior Product Manager, to explain how the partnership of Autodesk and Pitney Bowes Software will benefit GIS practitioners and designers everywhere, but especially those within municipal government, transportation and natural resources. With a combined solution from both organizations GIS and BIM users are empowered to effectively realize more unified infrastructure lifecycles, from Plan -> Design-> Build-> Manage.

More specifically, the webinar will present• Details of the City of Vancouver’s integrated GIS workflow• Applications for urban planning, transportation and natural resource management• Benefits of full end-to-end workflow solutions

Who should attendGIS practitioners and managers in any industry, and especially those in government, transportation and natural resource management.

March 30, 2012

At a recent conference in London, the National Infrastructure Plan for the UK was outlined. This is a plan to invest £ 400 billion over 10 yrs in UK infrastructure including high speed rail, energy (especially nuclear and wind), aviation, water and wastewater, roads and highways, and high speed broadband. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this plan is the intention that 70% of the funding will come from the private sector.

The Mayor of Chicago has just outlined a $7 billion infrastructure development plan for Chicago. An important participant in this plan is the Chicago Infrastructure Trust, an initiative announced by Mayor Emanuel and former President Bill Clinton. The fund is a nonprofit corporation that collects private investment which is then applied to infrastructure development.

The Mayor specifically mentioned several major projects including

$1 billion for the Chicago Transit Authority to renovate more than 100 stations and eliminate “slow zones”

$1.4 billion for O’Hare International Airport for two new runways by 2015 and other expansion.

$1.4 billion to fix Chicago's water system (3,800 leaks last year), including the replacement of 900 miles of century-old water pipe, the repair of 750 miles of sewer line, and the reconstruction of 160,000 catch-basins.

A $660 million investment in Chicago Public Schools, and a $479 million investment in the City Colleges of Chicago

“Retrofit Chicago,” a $225 million dollar effort to retrofit City buildings, reducing their energy consumption by 25 percent - the first project funded by the Chicago Infrastructure Trust.

Presumably this is in addition to the consent decree that Chicago agreed to in December of last year to address the issue of combined sewer overflows that it is estimated will cost the city about $3 billion.

March 02, 2012

One of the things I particularly like about Air Canada is the movie/video content because you can find things that you might not otherwise come across. Last Sunday coming back from the UK, I was lucky to find two engrossing documentaries about electric vehicles.

The first was "Who Killed the Electric Car ?" which is the intriguing history of General Motors' EV1, every instance of which GM ultimately tracked down and destroyed, except for one EV1 in a museum, and even than one GM insisted on disabling. In answer to the question in the title, the film concluded that the American consumer, the automobile manufactureres, and the oil companies were all partially to blame.

In its 2009 asessment the Energy Information Administration (EIA) identified several key issues that will determine when and if widespread adoption of the electric vehicle occurs

"A typical consumer may be willing to purchase a PHEV instead of a conventional ICE vehicle when the economic benefit of reduced fuel expenditures is greater than the total incremental cost of the PHEV.

"PHEVs also face uncertainty with respect to Li-Ion battery life and safety. Future advances in Li-Ion battery technology could address economic, lifetime, and safety concerns, paving the way for large-scale sales and significant penetration of PHEVs into the U.S. LDV fleet. For example, a technological breakthrough could conceivably allow for smaller batteries with the same capacity and power output, thus lowering incremental costs and making PHEVs attractive on a cost-benefit basis.

"PHEVs could significantly reduce GHG emissions in the transportation sector, depending on the fuels used to produce electricity.

"PHEVs use less gasoline than conventional ICE vehicles. If PHEVs displaced conventional ICE vehicles, U.S. petroleum imports could be reduced."

According to a recent report from Pike Research, "hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) combined will represent 3.1% of worldwide auto sales by 2017. Thanks to higher penetration rates in the United States, HEVs and PEVs will account for 5.1% of total U.S. vehicle sales in 2017."

Related to EIA Item 2, at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, it was reported that independent testing has verified that a new Envia lithium-ion battery achieves 400 Wh/kg compared to 80-150 Wh/kg for current state-of-the-art batteries. It is claimed that the Envia battery would extend the range of a 100 mile EV to 300 miles which based on the EIA's assessment could significantly change the cost-benefit picture of EVs.